I led the launch of social platforms for GE Intelligent Platform.
For three years, I worked to build social followers. The goal was to generate awareness and drive engagement of our key messages. We defined engagement as likes, shares, retweets, comments, post clicks, mentions and favorites. We wanted our followers to get excited and share our passion, retelling our message to their networks. Social is all about networks of networks. We experimented with different types of posts and new ways to use social. We added some promotion dollars to expand our audience but mostly relied on organic growth.
Twitter Followers
We began engaging on Twitter in 2012 and scored almost 8,000 followers before we migrated the channel when the GE Intelligent Platforms business units merged with GE Software to form GE Digital.
LinkedIn Followers
The initial LinkedIn channel wasn’t integrated with other marketing efforts. With consistent messaging and posting, followers grew by double digit percentages most quarters, rising from 2,500 to almost 14,500 between 2012 and 2015.
The results were fantastic. We operated in the industrial space where many believed the conservative professional wouldn’t engage. It was a journey, but we showed our leadership the power of social in our B2B market. Company strategy changed late 2015 and we migrated many of our followers to other social handles where we continue to explore ways to use these powerful marketing tactics.
